Hello Everyone!
The lame time change, An end of the world rant, More solutions less problems & Eking out a living!
I never wrote anything today and it is now well after sunset and if I do not start writing now I will not do it at all. With the stupid change in time due to 'daylight saving time' I have felt kind of off all day and everything that I usually do at one time I now have to adjust to doing at another which is quite annoying to say the least.
Honestly, disrupting everyone's routine twice a year is such a psychotic thing to do and I have no idea why the practice has been held onto for as long as it has but I wish that it would stop. Seriously, how can anyone think that such an arbitrary disruption to daily routines is actually a good thing!
Anyway, the day was rather chilly once again but at least it was sunny and the wind died down a lot compared to how hard it was blowing yesterday. Even though it looked really nice outside and I thought that I could maybe get some stuff done... it was actually pretty miserable out there given the chill the wind had to it.
Once again I left the water system offline and did not bother to re-energize it because it is going to freeze again tonight and I still had plenty of water on hand to get me through. I did consider turning it back on so I could have a fire but disregarded that once I realized that some of those wind gusts were a bit stronger than what I am comfortable with for having an open fire.
Mostly I spent the day vegging out watching all kinds of random videos online and doing my best not to get too sucked into reading the news cycle. As far as the former goes I mainly watched a variety of bushcraft, do-it-yourself, prepping and homesteading videos and as for the latter... I probably read/watched way too much of the stuff and yeah it is an exhausting affair trying to parse out the 'truth' of what the heck is going on.
Do not worry I am not going to go all that far down that rabbit warren in this entry as far as 'truth' is concerned. That being said, I do want to say that (in my perspective) the times ahead are more than likely going to be some turbulent ones and hardship and scarcity will probably dominate most folks lives to one extent or another. Unless of course they are immune to said hardship via their socioeconomic status.
Of course in comparison to everyone else that is a mere sliver of the populace and (again in my perspective) those folks by and large are the same ones propelling us towards hell in a handbasket... so the only thing that I will count on them doing is continuing to over-consume, exploit the hard work of others and generally being the reason we have arrived at the point in history that we find ourselves.
Lets not candy-coat what is going on and just admit that we are currently engaged in world war three and no that term does not deserve to be capitalized in my opinion given how horrific it is. What we are seeing play out is the formation of alliances, the rallying of troops, the positioning of forces and the dividing lines being drawn so thickly that the geo-political stage will never be the same again.
Stability and civility collapsing not all at once but in slow gradual steps does not somehow make it better, more palatable, or acceptable. By and large it just makes it worse that we are once again failing as a species, ignoring the climate crisis and burning through our resources like there is 'no tomorrow' which I guess is kind of the mentality that has delivered us to where we are so I digress.
As horrific as the current conflict is lets not lose sight of the fact that such conflicts have been going on for a very long time now and by and large no one wants to talk about the deep hypocrisy of decrying one nation from invading another when it does not suit our purposes and applauding them when it does suit them.
Unfortunately history is rife with such instances and no amount of whitewashing can rinse the blood from the hands of those involved and nor should it. The frightening thing about this time is that the flow of information is so censored, tailored for specific narratives and laden with propaganda that there is absolutely no way to gain a broader perspective let alone like the old saying goes: Know the difference between shit and shinloa!
That sort of stuff just sets us up for more distrust, more uncertainty and in general contributes to the overall sense of panic (no matter how mild or large it is) that anyone with two brain cells to rub together should rightly be harboring at this moment in history.
If folks are not feeling that sort of thing then all I can say is: If the thought of nuclear war does not terrify you then you are a fool because it could damn well spell the end of (insert whatever country you live in) as well as the end of life on good old planet earth. Yes we (humans) have the nuclear armaments to not just wipe out all life on earth... not once but many times over!
Sadly, I am not being an alarmist with all this even though I do find it quite alarming. I simply want to point out that it is better to face reality as it is and not turn a blind eye to it because it is inconvenient, scary and uncomfortable.
Let me be clear here and say that to me it is absolutely terrifying to ponder the ramifications of it all and personally I am not one of the folks that either romanticize nor fantasize about living in some post-apocalyptic hellscape and I damn sure do not want to see that as what is left behind for future generations if (of course) there are any.
So, what can be done is the real question and I wish there was a singular answer that might help but there just is not. If I was the religious type I would say to pray. If I was the political type I would say to make a difference. If I was the protesting type I would say to protest. If I was the type that fetishizes finances I would say put your money where your mouth is.
But at the end of the day I am none of those things so I do the one thing that I can do: Choose what kind of attitude that I have about it all and not let myself get overwhelmed by it to the point of despair or discombobulation.
Which of course is easier said than done especially since I am bombarded with the current problems at every turn. The only way I see to avoid it (the bombardment) is by not going online at all, not listening to commercial radio, watching television, or reading newsprint and basically tuning out the world completely aside from the weather forecast!
Heck, we may well be witnessing (and unwilling participants) in the largest operation to radicalize as many folks as possible in all of known history. My question is: To what end? I mean really why not just come out and say that the world's populace is being maneuvered into choosing a side in a larger struggle yet to come and there is not a damn thing that anyone can do about it let alone present an alternate view of the 'why' behind it all.
If you think 'conform or perish' is not the motto of the current zeitgeist then I would ask you to take a step back from it all and give it a nice solid reassessment because that is exactly what is happening. Of course it goes well beyond the bounds of weaponized information because even the delivery mechanisms of said information have at this point also been they themselves weaponized. Again I ask the question: To what end?
My point being with all of that is that I wholly refuse to accept that humans cannot or will not do better given the knowledge and resources to do so and when neither of those are available and critical thinking is disregarded we have fucking chaos. Or at least all the prime ingredients for chaos to ensue once some agreed upon (or maybe not agreed upon) flash point has occurred.
Personally, I think that is a bad deal all around and there are no good things that can come from the divisions being sewn, the lines being drawn and the sides being taken which ensures that the suffering in the world increases instead of decreases.
To be point blank: In my perspective, none of this ends well and while we can obviously pour infinite amounts of money into war and death... we are unwilling to do the same for peace and life and yeah how we budget our finances tells that story all too well. But hey feel free to bullshit yourself that it is otherwise... just do not get your knickers in a wad when I do not... or get them in a wad and I will get back to you when I actually give a damn.
All that stuff has obviously been rumbling around in my mind a lot lately and no I am in no way as 'fired up' about it as my spelling it out might make me appear to be. Its mentally exhausting enough just trying to keep abreast of it all and doing what I can to prepare my mind and my life to make it as long as I possibly can... so with that in mind I am in no way 'into' making it harder to process it all let alone digest it!
My thinking mainly keeps leading me to the conclusion that I need to get serious about tending to my mental well-being, growing more food, creating plans, creating contingency plans and generally upping my preparedness (for whatever) to the best of my capabilities and resources. While the former I have plenty of the latter is a total shitshow... hence my own heightened anxiety.
The thing is that all I can do is write these entries, hope my eXode cards (NFTs) sell and keep making lots of tiny cryptocurrency trades and/or investments in an effort to keep my little 'boat afloat' so to speak. At least as far as financial resources go which thankfully are not the only resources at my disposal even though they are the ones that I am referring to.
As far as things within the realm of my 'control' go... I can work on expanding my water and food storage, continue to bolster the wild edibles and wildlife, learn the lay of the land the best that I can, create a bug out spot or two and generally keep my damned wits about me as I do the same old stuff that I have been doing for the last many years.
So much of what is going on is just way outside my 'control' or 'influence' and although I might complain when there is something missing at the store when I go shopping... I also need to be able to pivot in those moments and figure out what else can fill its spot. A good example of that is how I switched to buying bags of tilapia because sausage and sandwich meat were wholly non-existent on the shelves the last time I went to the store.
Anyway, it is approaching midnight (thanks stupid time change) and I have to wrap this up and get it edited if I am going to stay on my posting routine. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a nice day/night.
https://peakd.com/c/hive-114308/created
